↖  美联储主席格林斯潘回忆录——动荡年代：勇闯新世界-the age of turbulence-70..

美联储主席格林斯潘回忆录——动荡年代：勇闯新世界-the age of turbulence-70

THE MODES OF CAPITALISM 

They may be friends, but they are also seen as rivals in the pecking order. Individuals are demonstrably happier and less stressed as their incomes rise with a rising national economy, and rich people, surveys show, are generally happier than those lower down the income scale. 

But human psychology being what it is, the initial euphoria of a higher standard of living soon wears off as the newly affluent adjust to their better status in life. 

The new level is quickly perceived as "normal." 

Any gain in human contentment is transitory* 

People's conflicted reactions to capitalism have spawned a variety of modes of capitalist practice in the postwar years, from highly regulated to lightly constrained.

 While each individual has an opinion, there is a visible tendency for much of a society to coalesce around a common point of view, 

which often differs measurably from the choices of other societies. 

This, I sense, results from the need of people to belong to groups defined by religion, culture, and history, which, in turn, is fostered by an innate need of 

people for leaders: of the family, the tribe, the village, the nation. 

It is a universal trait that probably reflects the imperative for people to make choices to govern their day-by-day behavior. 

Most people, much of the time, feel inadequate to the task and seek guidance from religious direction, the recommendations of family members, and the pronouncements of presidents. 

Almost all human organizations reflect this need for hierarchy. 

The shared views of any society, in practice, are views embraced by its leadership. 

If happiness were tied solely to material well-being, I suspect, all forms of capitalism would converge to the American model, which has been the most dynamic and productive. 

But it is also the one that creates the most stress, especially in the job market. 

As noted in chapter 8, some four hundred thousand people in the United States lose their jobs every week, and another six hundred thousand change or leave jobs voluntarily. 

Average job tenure for Americans is 6.6 years, well short of the 10.6 years for Germans and 12.2 years for Japanese. 

Market-based societies, which today means virtually all, have had to choose where on the spectrum they wish to reside between two extremes that could be symbolized by two points on the map: frenetic but highly productive Silicon Valley at the one end and unchanging Venice at the other. 

*Fortunately, this psychology also works in reverse. Sharp financial adversity brings deep depression. But people not otherwise psychologically incapacitated rebound with time. Their smile returns. 

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THE AGE OF TURBULENCE 

For each society, the choice, in effect the trade-off between material wealth and lack of stress, appears to rest on its history and the culture it has spawned. 

By culture, I mean the shared values of members of a society that are inculcated at an early age and that pervade all aspects of living. 

Some aspects of a nation's culture end up visibly affecting the GDP. 

Positive attitudes toward business success, for example, a deeply cultural response, have in the course of generations been an important springboard 

to material well-being. 

Clearly, a society with such attitudes will give enterprises far greater freedom to compete than a society that perceives competitive business as unethical or unsettling. 

In my experience, even many of those who acknowledge the advantages to material well-being of competitive capitalism are conflicted for two somewhat related reasons. 

First, competition and risk taking cause stress, which most people wish to avoid; 

second, many feel deep-seated ambivalence toward the accumulation of 

wealth. 

On the one hand, wealth is a much-sought-after means of flaunting status (Veblen would understand). 

But that view is opposed by the well-nurtured belief best captured by the biblical injunction "it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." 

The ambivalence toward accumulation of material wealth has a long cultural history that pervades society to this day. 

It has had a profound influence on the development of the welfare state and the 

social safety net that is at its core. 

It is argued that unconstrained risk taking increases the concentration of income and wealth. The purpose of the welfare state is to lessen that income and wealth concentration, which it does largely through legislation that, via regulation, constrains risk taking and, via taxation, reduces the pecuniary rewards that may result from taking risks. 

Although the roots of socialism are secular, its political thrust parallels many religious prescriptions for a civil society, seeking to assuage the anguish of the poor. 

The pursuit of wealth has been deemed unethical, if not immoral, since long before the emergence of the welfare state. 

This antimaterialist ethic has always been a low-intensity suppressant to the acceptance of dynamic competition and the unfettered institutions of capitalism. Many of the business titans of nineteenth-century American industry were conflicted about the morality of holding on to material gains from their ventures and gave away much of their wealth. 

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THE MODES OF CAPITALISM 

To this day, a residue of guilt about wealth accumulation exists under the surface of our market culture, but the degree of ambivalence toward wealth accumulation 

and attitudes toward risk taking differ widely across the globe. 

Take the United States and France, for example, both of whose most fundamental values are rooted in the Enlightenment. 

A recent poll shows that 71 percent of Americans agree that the free-market system is the best economic system available. Only 36 percent of the French agree.

 Another poll indicates that three-fourths of young French men and women aspire to a job in government. Few young Americans express that preference. 

Such numbers speak to a remarkable difference in risk tolerance. 

The French are far less inclined to suffer the competitive pressures of a free market and overwhelmingly seek the security of a government job, despite the widespread evidence that risk taking is essential for economic growth. 

I can't say the greater the risk taking, the greater the rate of growth. 

Obviously, reckless gambling rarely pays off in the end. 

The risk taking I have in mind is the rationally calculated kind of most business judgments. 

It has to be the case that restraint on freedom of action, the essence of government 

regulation of business, or heavy taxation of successful ventures must suppress the willingness of market participants to act. 

To me, the degree of willingness to take risks is, in the end, the major defining characteristic that separates countries into the various modes of capitalism. Whether different degrees of risk aversion stem from an ethical antipathy toward wealth accumulation or the stress of competitive battle does not affect the consequences. 

They are both captured in the choice of legal inhibitions imposed on competition that dilute laissez-faire capitalism, an important purpose of the welfare state. 

But there are other, less fundamental suppressants of competitive behavior as well. Most politically prominent is the inclination of many societies to protect "national treasures" from the winds of creative destruction, or worse, foreign ownership. 

That is a dangerous restraint on international competition and another issue that differentiates one culture from another. 

In 2006, for example, French officials blocked an Italian firm's attempt to buy Suez Company, a large Paris-based utility manager, by promoting the merger of Suez and Gaz de France. Both Spain and Italy have made similarly protectionist moves. 

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(未完待续, To be contd)
 

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